Catalonia

[welshbairn]

Just now, Big Fifer said:

I find the links between the SNP/Catalonia a bit weird also; I'll admit I'm a bit ignorant but is Catalonia not  a very wealthy area? It's not going to turn into some socialist utopia in the same way most folk think and indy Scotland will.

Puts me off a bit too. It's a bit like Northern Italy who have most of the dosh due to climate and location. The folk campaigning for independence there are neo-nazis, or they were. There seems to be a divide in Catalonians campaigning for independence between left and right, though the party ruling in Madrid, bit like the Tories, does very badly in Catalonia.

[HTG]

5 minutes ago, Big Fifer said:

I find the links between the SNP/Catalonia a bit weird also; I'll admit I'm a bit ignorant but is Catalonia not  a very wealthy area? It's not going to turn into some socialist utopia in the same way most folk think an indy Scotland will.

Thereby invoking the "too wee, too rich" principle. Basically it seems anywhere seeking independence is just "too something". Once that fails we get the time not being right.  Anyone want to guess at stage 3 resistance from the state? 

[git-intae-thum]

7 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Puts me off a bit too. It's a bit like Northern Italy who have most of the dosh due to climate and location. The folk campaigning for independence there are neo-nazis, or they were. There seems to be a divide in Catalonians campaigning for independence between left and right, though the party ruling in Madrid, bit like the Tories, does very badly in Catalonia.

Eh...Catalunya was the last bastion of the old republic. The country was punished by Franco's fascists.

[welshbairn]

Just now, git-intae-thum said:

Eh...Catalunya was the last bastion of the old republic. The country was punished by Franco's fascists.

How come they were still fighting Franco in Madrid 2 months later then?

[NotThePars]

Puts me off a bit too. It's a bit like Northern Italy who have most of the dosh due to climate and location. The folk campaigning for independence there are neo-nazis, or they were. There seems to be a divide in Catalonians campaigning for independence between left and right, though the party ruling in Madrid, bit like the Tories, does very badly in Catalonia.

The history of Spain is one of Castilian subjugation and domination of the other areas of Spain. I don't think you can make that argument about Italy.

[invergowrie arab]

1 hour ago, Big Fifer said:

Yeah but the Catalonian polls don't seem to be the most accurate and verifiable, and this one certainly isn't all too accurate as the vast majority of No voters won't have voted.

It's really pretty easy to find opinion polls and they tend to have it around 50/50 with a slight lead for No. 

In any case it's not that important as not everything has to have implications for Scottish independence, it's an interesting enough story in its own.

57 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Puts me off a bit too. It's a bit like Northern Italy who have most of the dosh due to climate and location. The folk campaigning for independence there are neo-nazis, or they were. There seems to be a divide in Catalonians campaigning for independence between left and right, though the party ruling in Madrid, bit like the Tories, does very badly in Catalonia.

It's absolutely nothing like the Liga Nord. You seem to have this myopia about Catalonia's wealth whilst completely disregarding the plurality of their independence movement and the cultural and social history and present of the movement.

 

[git-intae-thum]

57 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

How come they were still fighting Franco in Madrid 2 months later then?

Ffs one of the last bastions then. My point stands.

[TheProgressiveLiberal]

A commentator on the ISteve blog wrote this about the right / left question and the history of Catalonian nationalism. Thought it was interesting.

Spoiler

The Catalan Question is even more perplexing. You’re correct to note that Orwell and the romance of the Civil War has induced foreigners, especially the wide-eyed and big-hearted, into viewing the whole of Catalan seperatism as a historically Leftist endeavour, but it has had several incarnations throughout time. Even there among the barricades of 1936-39 lies a glitch. A big part of why Barcelona had become a hotbed for Marxist and Anarcho-syndicalist movements is that the huge local proletariat was largely, if not exclusively, non-Catalan in origin and was living in shambolic quarters right next to a city of splendour and abundance. So much so that a subtext of Kulturkampf was in evidence: in some quarters, leftist militias erected banners declaring “Speak Spanish” as a culture war symbol against their Catalan-speaking bosses and burguers, presumably chiding their snobbery as much as their exploititiveness. At the same time you had genuinely Catalanist left-wing groupings like the Esquerra Republicana Català, so the picture becomes further mudied.

Now, if you go back to 1714, supposedly Catalonia’s starting point for regional seperatism, you have to be wary that the French Rev has yet to take place and hence to speak of Left-vs-Right seems anachronistic. But if anything, their revolt was an expression of feudal privileges and a defence of an older Hapsburg form of monarchy as a bulwark against the French-imitating centralising model of a Bourbon monarchy. One might even say it was a defence of traditionalism versus modernisation. Over the next two centuries, the Catalan middle and upper-classes were happy to push for a maximum of local autonomy but never at the expense of their precious access to Spain’s imperial markets – Cuba in particular. Thus, cultural nationalism became a safety valve for expression of local atavisms where political agitation might have been too disturbing to contemplate. Granted, the loss of Spain’s Empire in 1898 makes much of being associated with Spain appear tainted to Catalans on the left and the right. But even post-Civil War and post-Franco, the Catalan urban business community and even its rural conservative faction were always happy to do business with Right-wing parties in Madrid provided that Madrid maxxed their fiscal autonomy and let them engage in a cosplay cultivating dreams of a future nation/yearning for a mythical past. In premise, Catalan regionalism has always had left-wing and right-wing manifestations. For example, Barcelona soccer club has made a killing marketing itself as a sort of anti-Spain, and the kind of rebel-romance mythos that a global fanbase loves to imbibe, yet its directors and operators have featured a hotel magnate who was a fully-paid up member of the Partido Popular – oft-deried as the successors to Franco – on the basis that having the Spanish Right lording it over federal matters in Madrid is preferrable to the Spanish Left holding the levers, as well as a Friedmanite economist whose vision of an independent Catalonia is more Singapore than Scandanavia. What has happened in recent years to bring us to this present impasse is that the etiquette in the Madrid-Barcelona tango has broken down: the Spanish Right is wedded to a centralist vision of the nation since 1812 which in turn alienates the two most productive regions of the country which it needs to prevent the entire peninsula from becoming a left-wing governed banana republic. But since the Spanish Right also purports to defend the Catholic Spain in the culture wars, it ends up casting itself as a punching bag for the grievances of every weed-smoking co-op buying cat-owning leftie in Catalonia and every other corner of Spain. Such that I have lefty friends in Madrid who are egging on Catalan independence because they hope it will become the encarnation of a Spain they wished to see had the Second Republic triumphed. Hell, some of them will even take to learning Catalan and relocate there. So now the prospects of a fiscally prudent Catalonia becoming independent only to midwife a Bolivarian experiment is probably keeping the more right-leaning regionalists awake at night: separate from Madrid only to become a reenactment of Madrid in 1936 (Madrid, despite the libel thrown at it by everyone within Spain who hates Spain, was a leftwing holdout for most of the Civil War), and this time with an open-borders mayor in Barcelona gladly declaring a sanctuary city for Mohammedans (cos, y’know, to atone for Spain having had the temerity to reconquer territory from the Moors)

 

[John Lambies Doos]

A commentator on the ISteve blog wrote this about the right / left question and the history of Catalonian nationalism. Thought it was interesting.
Spoiler The Catalan Question is even more perplexing. You’re correct to note that Orwell and the romance of the Civil War has induced foreigners, especially the wide-eyed and big-hearted, into viewing the whole of Catalan seperatism as a historically Leftist endeavour, but it has had several incarnations throughout time. Even there among the barricades of 1936-39 lies a glitch. A big part of why Barcelona had become a hotbed for Marxist and Anarcho-syndicalist movements is that the huge local proletariat was largely, if not exclusively, non-Catalan in origin and was living in shambolic quarters right next to a city of splendour and abundance. So much so that a subtext of Kulturkampf was in evidence: in some quarters, leftist militias erected banners declaring “Speak Spanish” as a culture war symbol against their Catalan-speaking bosses and burguers, presumably chiding their snobbery as much as their exploititiveness. At the same time you had genuinely Catalanist left-wing groupings like the Esquerra Republicana Català, so the picture becomes further mudied.
Now, if you go back to 1714, supposedly Catalonia’s starting point for regional seperatism, you have to be wary that the French Rev has yet to take place and hence to speak of Left-vs-Right seems anachronistic. But if anything, their revolt was an expression of feudal privileges and a defence of an older Hapsburg form of monarchy as a bulwark against the French-imitating centralising model of a Bourbon monarchy. One might even say it was a defence of traditionalism versus modernisation. Over the next two centuries, the Catalan middle and upper-classes were happy to push for a maximum of local autonomy but never at the expense of their precious access to Spain’s imperial markets – Cuba in particular. Thus, cultural nationalism became a safety valve for expression of local atavisms where political agitation might have been too disturbing to contemplate. Granted, the loss of Spain’s Empire in 1898 makes much of being associated with Spain appear tainted to Catalans on the left and the right. But even post-Civil War and post-Franco, the Catalan urban business community and even its rural conservative faction were always happy to do business with Right-wing parties in Madrid provided that Madrid maxxed their fiscal autonomy and let them engage in a cosplay cultivating dreams of a future nation/yearning for a mythical past. In premise, Catalan regionalism has always had left-wing and right-wing manifestations. For example, Barcelona soccer club has made a killing marketing itself as a sort of anti-Spain, and the kind of rebel-romance mythos that a global fanbase loves to imbibe, yet its directors and operators have featured a hotel magnate who was a fully-paid up member of the Partido Popular – oft-deried as the successors to Franco – on the basis that having the Spanish Right lording it over federal matters in Madrid is preferrable to the Spanish Left holding the levers, as well as a Friedmanite economist whose vision of an independent Catalonia is more Singapore than Scandanavia. What has happened in recent years to bring us to this present impasse is that the etiquette in the Madrid-Barcelona tango has broken down: the Spanish Right is wedded to a centralist vision of the nation since 1812 which in turn alienates the two most productive regions of the country which it needs to prevent the entire peninsula from becoming a left-wing governed banana republic. But since the Spanish Right also purports to defend the Catholic Spain in the culture wars, it ends up casting itself as a punching bag for the grievances of every weed-smoking co-op buying cat-owning leftie in Catalonia and every other corner of Spain. Such that I have lefty friends in Madrid who are egging on Catalan independence because they hope it will become the encarnation of a Spain they wished to see had the Second Republic triumphed. Hell, some of them will even take to learning Catalan and relocate there. So now the prospects of a fiscally prudent Catalonia becoming independent only to midwife a Bolivarian experiment is probably keeping the more right-leaning regionalists awake at night: separate from Madrid only to become a reenactment of Madrid in 1936 (Madrid, despite the libel thrown at it by everyone within Spain who hates Spain, was a leftwing holdout for most of the Civil War), and this time with an open-borders mayor in Barcelona gladly declaring a sanctuary city for Mohammedans (cos, y’know, to atone for Spain having had the temerity to reconquer territory from the Moors)
 

I stopped at Bourbon. Got a bit peckish. Will read more later....

[Jmothecat2]

I stopped at Bourbon. Got a bit peckish. Will read more later....

I stopped at Bourbon. Got a bit thirsty. Will read more later.....

[Antlion]

If the EU actually confirms that Catalonia, on declaring independence, is out of the club and its control, I'd advise England to rapidly seek independence from the UK. Boom - it's out of the EU without a divorce bill, and in the hard way big Tez seems to want anyway.

[John Lambies Doos]

If the EU actually confirms that Catalonia, on declaring independence, is out of the club and its control, I'd advise England to rapidly seek independence from the UK. Boom - it's out of the EU without a divorce bill, and in the hard way big Tez seems to want anyway.

It can take fuckin Wales with it.

[sparky88]

3 hours ago, Big Fifer said:

I find the links between the SNP/Catalonia a bit weird also; I'll admit I'm a bit ignorant but is Catalonia not  a very wealthy area? It's not going to turn into some socialist utopia in the same way most folk think an indy Scotland will.

It's only weird if you think the SNP want to turn scotland into a socialist utopia, and I'm not sure that's what Fergus Ewing and John Mason have in mind.  Nationalist movements around the world adopt whatever socioecomic principles that will help achieve their goal. 

[Antlion]

23 minutes ago, sparky88 said:

It's only weird if you think the SNP want to turn scotland into a socialist utopia, and I'm not sure that's what Fergus Ewing and John Mason have in mind.  Nationalist movements around the world adopt whatever socioecomic principles that will help achieve their goal. 

The SNP don't get to turn Scotland into anything in the event of independence, unless the Scottish electorate want them to do so. That's kind of the point. An independent nation gets to elect governments which work towards creating the type of society its electorate want; a dependent nation lets its larger neighbour elect governments which work towards creating the type of society its electorate wants.

[Granny Danger]

From the CNN website:

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, called for "independent and impartial investigations into all acts of violence" around the independence referendum, and asked the Spanish government to allow UN human rights experts to visit.

That's a pretty positive development IMO, one that the Spanish government may find hard to shrug off.

 

[welshbairn]

10 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

From the CNN website:

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, called for "independent and impartial investigations into all acts of violence" around the independence referendum, and asked the Spanish government to allow UN human rights experts to visit.

That's a pretty positive development IMO, one that the Spanish government may find hard to shrug off.

 

Did you see any stuff going on in Ibiza?

[Granny Danger]

6 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Did you see any stuff going on in Ibiza?

No.  A few Spanish flags in Ibiza Town that I've not seen in previous years but nothing pro Catalonia.

[wastecoatwilly]

Catalonia to hold general strike in protest at police violence — RT News

More than 40 unions and Catalonian associations are calling for a general strike across the embattled region following widespread violence during t...

rt.com this is a good move 

[Tartan Dave]

16 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

Despite being a regular visitor to Barcelona I have never paid much attention to the police though there is always a significant presence.

That said I'm fairly sure the civil guard are a continual presence in the city.  If so I assume the actions yesterday, and in particular the indiscriminate violence, will make their position and their ongoing cooperation with the local police extremely difficult.

Seen the police chase a bunch of boys with batons along the beach whilst on a night out in Barca a couple years ago. Was a bit mental

[John Lambies Doos]

Are we expecting a UDI declaration today?